Black Clock # 11

Black Clock #11

by Steve Erickson (editor), Bruce Bauman (editor), Josh Denslow

Black Clock #11 features work by such prominent authors as Joanna Scott, Chris Abani and Susan Straight, and introduces the usual selection of dazzling new voices.

In Richard Powers’ “Over the Limit,” freely adapted from his just published novel, a young African woman genetically predisposed to happiness stands at the nexus of a brilliant, narcissistic scientist and the discontented moderator of a TV news magazine. In Rob Roberge’s “Stooge” and Lou Mathews’ “Hollywoodski,” Vegas drug deals go bad and drunken Tinseltown conversations run wild, and in Antonia Crane’s “Rosebud,” a self-designated “sexual outlaw” and stripper looking to retire gets caught up in the intrigues of an aging decadent Hollywood couple. In “This Is How the Past Turns Up”, Greil Marcus charts one of his patently revelatory longitudes between Barack Obama’s election-night victory speech, the fiction of Philip Roth, and Sam Cooke’s perennial contender for the greatest record of all time, “A Change Is Gonna Come.

138 pages

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Steve Erickson is a distinguished American novelist known for a visionary, dream-fueled style that blends European modernism with American pulp and postmodernism. Raised in Los Angeles, he studied film and political philosophy at UCLA, influences that permeate celebrated works such as Days Between Stations, Tours of the Black Clock, and Zeroville. Critics, including Greil Marcus, have labeled him "the only authentic American surrealist," placing him in the lineage of Pynchon and DeLillo. His most acclaimed novel, Shadowbahn, was hailed as a masterpiece even prior to its release and was later adapted for BBC Radio. A "writer’s writer," Erickson has published ten novels translated into over a dozen languages, consistently appearing on best-of-the-year lists for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He is the recipient of the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters award. Erickson served for fourteen years as the founding editor of the journal Black Clock and is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nooo no no -- what a disappointment. I've so enjoyed the Black Clocks I've read in the past -- this didn't live up to them. A lot of failed potential. The standout story, by far, was Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's "The Afterlife of Skeptics", which is much more than the rest what I'd consider a Black Clock story...weird, slightly surreal, a touch opaque, but with multiple winding paths to its depths. I also liked David Grubbs' "I Am a Recording. I Don't Age." (and will find a way to teach it at some point). So like -- overall, worth it if only for those two, but generally, and it's a shame, a pass.

[Gabbrik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was just exposed to this journal recently. Currently I am reading the short story titled "Saint Jenny" By Amanda Yates. A piece that challenges the accepted and underlying assumption that magic is devoid in our lives. The story, contains a cinematic and dramatic imagery that brings the reader to emotional and imaginary sense rapture and horror through the fluid storytelling. The characters and surroundings are incredibly well thought out to seemingly remind the reader of the very real world we live in, but this work uses that assumed (and accepted) reality to explore a mystical and magical facet of our epistemological experience that we rarely recognize in our day to day lives. I admittedly, have not read any of the other articles but from the judge of the quality of writing going on in Yates' mysterious and mystical mind, I can pretty much guarantee I will highly enjoy the rest.